Talk:Pale Heart (Looking for critique)/@comment-16088117-20130821170834/@comment-10483109-20140312215527
I might as well respond to this now. Sorry for not getting to you earlier.... way earlier. It's probably too late now. I kind of went off this site for a long time and then I got back on it by chance. I wish I saw this sooner! Anyway, thank you for the critique~ Back then, i didn't really know how to explain that part of his personality well other than saying he is 'logical.' Really, he's more 'intelligent', but still victim to anxieties and paranoias. He's not really logical at all, in hindsight, haha. I also changed his backstory slighty, you brought up a good point though~ He really didn't have even good times back then. But even unpopular ponies have some friends, like how the CMC became friends even though they were picked on. I failed to mention that, though. He was friends with a mare named River Shine, who was also bullied~ Also, he liked his father and mother (somewhat..). So those were the 'good times', even though they were brief, they meant a lot to him and he couldn't give up on his parents and especially not his best friend. However, that wasn't incooperated into his background until much later when I thought about how it didn't make sense back then. As for the possession, Umbra is less harming the body and more of changing it. Again, after I realized it wouldn't really make sense for him to harm it. The spots are signs of Pale Heart changing physically, and the mental torture is to weaken Pale Heart to let down his guard. Umbra is less trying to kill Pale Heart from the inside and more of trying to corrupt him and turn him into another pony from the inside out. It's pretty effective, just a slow proccess. Basically, trying to destroy the mentallity of Pale Heart by creating a new pony from within. (By wiping the slate clean and replacing it with a different form. It works.) The only reason why this isn't tried with somepony else is that: A., making alicorns from scratch is hard and Pale Heart was just shy of being another fluke, B. Possessing some other alicorn is really hard without that black magic core that Pale Heart was infused with. Even Twilight, the youngest mortal alicorn, would be a challenge for Umbra because the corruption would be overrided by friendship magic. Pale Heart is sort of emotionless, true, but if it helps he wasn't always that way. Pale Heart had to look at the world with jaded glasses to survive the mutation Umbra tries to infect him with. Plus, with a childhood like that, who wouldn't grow up like that? I don't know, it makes sense to me. I'll have to tone it down though. He does have some emotions, after all. Strange ubringing - Yes, strange. Alicorn-dom - Not common in his version of Equestria, so yes another problem. Chosen one - Not really. Maybe for Umbra (although, again, he was an accidental success) , but not for anypony else. If anything, he becomes a broken deliverer. Like someone who was meant for great things but didn't amount to anything. Extrodinary will - I would say that's over the top, and true. I like the idea of someone overcoming evil with emotion and love for another, I admit. I responded to this, like, half a year later or more because even though Pale Heart has changed somewhat (and is still changing) because I still find it helpful as a basis to help me improve with him, and my other characters in general. Thank you again, this is very good food for thought. ^_^